


The face in the mirror

by TheSpaceFox



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode: s06e05 The Gospel of Josephine, F/M, No Beta, We Die Like Men, also, english isn't my first language, look these last two ep gave me feels, post - 6x05, this is how i cope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 17:19:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19067134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpaceFox/pseuds/TheSpaceFox
Summary: A one-shot speculation of what might happen after 6x05.





	The face in the mirror

**Author's Note:**

> So, hi! I'm back from the death with some Bellarke because this last two episode litterally wrecked me. I'm really happy with how this season is going and the fact that we have to wait two weeks to find out what happens next is next to criminal. T.T  
> So I decided to put out my take on what the next events might be like. 
> 
> Fair warning I wanted to make this belivable from what the show has given us so far so I had to slightly put dwon my shipper-goggles and went for something more like what canon usually gives us: AKA pent up emotions and not a lot of chances to talk them out properly. So keep that in mind while reading.
> 
> Thank you for cheking this out, and please let me know what you think! :D
> 
> P.S. english isn't my first language so I'm sorry if there are some mistakes here and there. Let me know so I can fix them!

**The face in the mirror**

 

 

He didn’t know how long he was left there on the cold floor before some guards took him to the skeleton room and bound him to a chair and then just left him there alone, paralyzed and scared. Not for himself, though. No. He couldn’t care less about what they wanted to do with him right now. All he could think about was that video they saw in the lab behind the wall to his right. All he could see was that girl contorting in pain while hooked into machines he had no idea what were doing to her, all he could hear were her deafening screams. And all he could do was picture Clarke in her place.

Scared.

Alone.

_Dying._

_**Again.** _

He had imagined her death more times than he could, or cared to, count during those six years on the ring. He pictured the worst ways for death to have claimed her back then. The raging fire of Praimfaya, falling off the communication tower, somehow surviving the death wave just to dwindle away, slowly, in a world that had already died on her.

He had imagined her death before, yes, but never, not even in his darkest fantasies, he had imagined something like this.

She was dead. And yet she was still walking among them, her body an empty shell being worn as second hand clothes. A taunt to their failure, no, **_his_** failure to protect her, to keep her safe.

This couldn’t be a real. It had to be a nightmare. It had to be.

He couldn’t do this again. He couldn’t lose her. _Not again._ He barely survived it once, he knew he wouldn’t survive it twice. Especially not while knowing that if he just had paid more attention to her, to the people of Sanctum, then, he might have prevented it. For God’s sake, he knew that people here valued nightblood and he didn’t put two and two together. How could he not see that she was in danger when everything was right in front of his eyes, clear as day.

The spiral of his dark thoughts was broken by the door in front of him squeaking open. She entered the room, alone and dressed in her usual clothes, her face relaxed, without that hateful smirk of superiority that never belonged on those lips and for a moment, for just a fraction of a moment, he hoped she was actually herself, coming to rescue him as she usually did. But then she opened her mount and all his hope died with what little remained of his hearth.

“Good morning, sunshine. Slept well?”

_Josephine Lightbourne. Nice to meet you._

Bile built up in the back of his throat at the memory.

How had he not realized sooner that that wasn’t Clarke? Everything about her was different. Her smiles came too easily, her posture was captivating and imposing but in the wrong way, too carefree and demanding attention. Her voice was slightly different too, now that he thought about it, a pitch a little too high, too light. But the thing that was most un-Clarke like were her eyes. How had he not noticed her eyes? The bright blue seemed duller, grayer, and colder than what he remembered. Nothing of the girl he knew was left.

Josephine hummed to herself at the lack of response, as mundane as if she just realized she forgot to close a window or switch a light.

“Oh, right the serum. It’s not fun being paralyzed, is it?”

She smiled wickedly, knowing that he had no choice but to listen to her talk.

Bellamy realized that she was enjoying this. The power of being in charge of the situation, the ability to toy with her pray like a bored wild cat. It was sickening. And the fact that she was toying with him in Clarke’s body made it a thousand time worse.

She dropped her fake smile and continued he narcissistic monologue.

“Let’s make things clear… The only reason why I haven’t killed you yet is that you might still be useful to me. So, I’m going to give you the antidote to the paralyzer, now. – she said while toying with a syringe he only now was noticing. –  But if you try anything, I’m going to kill you and everyone who isn’t a nightblood. Are we clear?”

He couldn’t respond, and even if he could he doubted he would have said anything but insults to the person wearing Clarke’s skin. A seething rage he hadn’t felt in years was making his way under his skin, slowly but steadily. He could feel its familiar fire burning in his veins.

He was going to burn this place to the ground. They were going to pay for what they did to her.

“I’ll take the silence as a yes.” She smiled her wicked smile and administrated the antidote to Bellamy.

Slowly, every sense came back to him, firstly as a tingle down every nerve of his system and then he regained more and more control over his sore muscles.

He turned his head to see Josephine better. She was watching him closely, intrigue in her eyes as if she was faced with an experiment or a puzzle and not a person tied to a chair.

“Seems like you can move now… So, tell me, what give me away? Was it just the language?”

He pondered how to respond, if to respond at all. Yes, the fact that she didn’t know Trig was the final nail on the coffin, his coffin, he thought bitterly, but that wasn’t just it. He thought back at all the little things she got wrong and with venom in his tone he decided that if she wanted to play, he could play too.

“You could _never_ be Clarke.”

“Well, seems like I am now.” She scoffed, gesturing her body, no **_Clarke’s_** body, with her hands.

Bellamy tried to hide his hurt behind the anger, but he couldn’t. He had to know. He had to ask, and he did as his voice broke more and more at each beat of the conversation.

“What did you do to her?”

“You know the answer to that. You saw the video. And since you were the first to figure out who I really am, you can’t be a total idiot.”

Except he was an idiot. He was the idiot who couldn’t protect the woman he loved. The idiot, who couldn’t even tell her that he did love her.

“What do you want from me?” He spit out.

“Information.” She answered simply, starting to circle him, her pace calm but clearly meant to put on a show of dominance.

“You seem to know a lot about this Clarke girl. Tell me how to keep the charade up and maybe I’ll consider not killing you and all your friends.”

So, the others didn’t know yet. Not ideal. They probably didn’t even know about him being tied to a chair in a room full of skeletons. Definitely not ideal. He was probably on his own for now. He needed more information. He needed to figure out a what Josephine knew and what she didn't. He _needed_ to protect Madi. He owed Clarke that much at least.

“Why? Clarke is- was the only host available. What else do you want from us?”

“Cut the crap. I know about the child. But she’s a bit too young to be a host just yet.”

A beat. She was studying him. He knew she was and yet, he couldn’t mask the dread that overcame him in that moment.  

“So, what I really want to know is how to interact with Abby. She is the one who made Clarke a nightblood, right? If she can do it again, we’ll never run out of hosts. We would achieve a paradise. And I can make sure that your people have a place in it.”

Her eyes glimmered, picturing a future perfect for the primes. One where they were Gods and everybody else was a sacrificial lamb eager to serve them.

“Why would I help **_you_**?” The disgust was evident in his voice. He would not, could not, allow them to succeed.

“I just told you. For survival. From what my dad told me that’s how you guys and Miss Wanheda here justified all the killing you did back on Earth.”

“ _Don’t_ call her that.”

His tone was quiet, but it was anything but calm. It seeped with hatred and a not so veiled threat. How dared she. How dared she spat that hideous name, and judge them for their choices. She was wearing Clarke as a meat-suite and she dared mock them. What a little entitled brat.

“Why not? She’s dead. What matters what I call her?”

It was petulant. A petulant child who wanted to be right at every cost. How in the world could Clarke, stubborn, fierce, magnificent Clarke, be erased by something like this?

And then it hit him. The truth so simple that it eluded him so far. She couldn’t.

The Clarke Griffin who lead with him a bunch of teenagers wouldn’t let someone like this Josephine be more than a nuisance to them. The Clarke Griffin who killed hundreds to save their people wouldn’t even spare this petulant child a second glance. The Clarke Griffin who loved and cared and fought every enemy they faced, even if the enemy was a burning planet, wouldn’t let this be the end of her. The Clarke Griffin he loved wouldn’t go silently into the night and let someone else use her body to hurt her family. No.

Clarke Griffin must have been in there somewhere and he’d find her, even if that was the last thing he did.

“It matters because she isn’t dead.”

His voice was surer that it has been in a while. He found his center again. One mission front and center in his mind: find Clarke and bring her home.

“Oh my god, maybe you are an idiot. She is dead. Murdered. Her consciousness was erased. What don’t you get about that?”

She was getting frustrated and annoyed. Good. He could use that.

“No. You’re the one who doesn’t get it. Clarke survived more than you can imagine. She’s alive. I know it. And I will get her back.”

She narrowed her eyes and crooked her head to one side, as if to get a better look at him. Then her face lit up in a mischievous realization.

“You loved her, didn’t you?”

Silence. He was done denying the truth. His eyes glistened with tears he had no time to shed and his jaw clenched trying to fight them back.

“And you never told her. – She chuckled dismissingly. – I almost pity you.”

She was closer now. So close that if his wrists weren’t bound, he’d be able to touch her. He knew it was desperate but he had to try and reach her in any way he could.

“Clarke…”

“Oh great. Are we really doing this now?”

Her frustration was palpable but he didn’t care. He couldn’t care less about Josephine Lightbourne. All that mattered was Clarke.

“Clarke please. I know you’re still in there.”

“She’s not!”

“Clarke! Give me a sign. Anything, please!”

“That’s it. I’m done. Maybe the guards will get something out of you.”

Josephine was getting ready to leave and he couldn’t let that happen. He had to find Clarke.

“Clarke. CLARKE! You have to fight her! Please! I… I need you too.”

Josephine stopped dead in her tracks, barely a few steps away from Bellamy. A strange sense of familiarity in the words he just spoke disturbed her. They shouldn’t mean anything to her. _He_ should mean anything to her, and yet she could feel something, nagging at the back of her head, closing the pit of her stomach and compelling her to look back at the source of that heartbroken voice.

So she did. She turned to look at him, and as soon as she laid eyes on his pleading figure, flashes filled mind. A starry night under a tree a lifetime ago. The dull grey halls of a damaged space ship, hurt and anger filling the air. The sweet scent of rain and the sound of gentle waves crushing on a pebbly shore.

“What… What’s going on?”

Confusion and fear were now the only emotions on Josephine’s face as tears that didn’t belong to her started falling down her cheeks. Bellamy hated seeing Clarke’s feature contort like that but that was the sign he was looking for.

“Clarke?! That’s it, Clarke! I don’t know what you’re doing but keep at it. Just like you did in the City of Light. Do you remember that?”

A white room and a woman dressed in red.

“Stop.”

“I know you remember. You kept fighting e-”

“STOP.”

“You kept fighting every damn time and I need you to keep doing it! Even when we… even when **_I left you,_** you never gave up.”

Everything stilled. He could see it; he could see her eyes and they were ** _hers._** He had to keep going.

“I left you to die and I never apologized. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry but please come back. I promise I won’t abandon you again.”

“STOP! BURNING. WHY EVERYTHING IS BURNING!?”

A scream that was sure to hunt his next nightmares for centuries filled the air. Josephine or Clarke, he wasn’t really sure at this point, crumpled on herself holding her head, the screaming never stopping, not until she fell limp on the floor her beautiful golden locks covering the majority of her face. And then nothing. For what felt like eternity the room was filled with silence.

He was paralyzed. Not by the serum this time, but by fear. A crippling fear that hold him, like a deadly vice, transfixed on the unnaturally still body laying just a few inches away from his feet.

_Was she…?_

No. This wasn’t the time to panic. She needed him. He had to pull himself together for now.

Somehow, he pushed down the terror that was silencing him and in a tentative voice managed to call out to her.

“Clarke…?”

Nothing.

“Clarke?! CLARKE!”

Still nothing.

He had to get closer to her. He had to hold her. But this damn restrains wouldn’t budge, not even when he was pulling with all his strength, not even when his wrists started to bleed. She was still lifeless on the floor and he was still bound on his chair.

And then the door opened again.

“What the hell? Bellamy?”

Murphy was confused and shocked at the sight before him, not really knowing what to make of any of this.

He had figured that if he played his cards right, he could work as a double agent. Get the trust of this psyco and then stab her in the back. That was his plan. That’s why when he didn’t find Bellamy back in his room he decided to go snooping around on his own. And once in the tunnels he heard the screams, the familiar voice of Clarke bouncing off of every wall and he had to see what was going on. The last thing he expected to find was Bellamy bleeding and bound to a chair with tears in eyes and not-Clarke limp on the floor.

“Murphy! Check if she’s breathing!”

He moved closer to Bellamy, ignoring his command, to free him and at his protests he couldn’t keep his mount shut while he finished cutting his bindings.

“You know she’s not Clarke, right? And what the hell is going on here?”

“She’s still in there! I saw her! I’ll explain later.”

He said desperately as he turned her over to see if she was still breathing. As soon as he noticed that she was, he let out a long sigh of relief and cradled her stiff figure in his arms, holding her tightly as if his life depended on it. He rested his forehead on hers, breathing in her sweet scent to refocus. She was alive for now, and he had to make sure that she remained that way. He needed Raven and Abby. They would know how to deal with this version of the Flame that took over Clarke. Or at least that’s what he hoped for.

“Look. Hate to interrupt, but we have to go. I bet I wasn’t the only one who heard her screams.”

He looked back at his friend who he almost forgot was there. He was right. They had to leave. Now.

 

* * *

 

 

The first thing she felt was the softness and warmth around her. Even as she was still coming to, she could tell that she was laying somewhere comfy, under a warm blanket, pillows under her head. It was so starkly different from the cold metal table she remembered.

Right. The dance. Killian. Russell. Josephine walking in her skin, acting like she never would. Bellamy, paralyzed on the floor and then bound to a chair. Her fight against this intruder in her mind.

It all came back in rush as her eyes shot open and she jolted awake, screaming.

“Hey! Hey! CLARKE! Calm down! You’re safe!”

She focused on her surroundings, she was back in her room in the Delilah’s tavern, and then she registered strong hands holding her, soft dark eyes searching hers in a way than none other could. And she knew. She was safe. For now, at least.

“Bellamy?”

It came out weak and pleading, more broken that she would have liked, but then again, she was more broken that she would have liked.

“Yeah. I’m here. You’re ok now.” His voice was full of emotion too, broken as muck as hers had been.

Her hands immediately reached for the nape of her neck, where she knew they implanted the chip, but she found no scar, only a freshly applied bandage.

He noticed her confusion and worry and promptly give her the answer she needed the most.

“She’s gone. Raven and your mom figured out a way to remove the chip safely from your head. You are safe, Clarke. I promise.”

She crushed into him without a second thought, softly breathing between her whimpers: “You saved me. You always save me.”

As if her words broke a dam, he started weeping with her, holding her closer and closer until no space between them was left. Neither of them knew how long they cried in each other’s arms before Abby and Madi entered the room and claimed Clarke for their own reunions.

And after that everyone of their friends did as well, even Raven to everyone’s surprise.

There were still a million things to do, a milion things to talk about but as far as Bellamy was concerned, Clarke alive, safe and surrounded by people that loved her was more than enough to finally make him smile.

 


End file.
